Up next for the FCC: Space communications

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski’s office is decorated with equipment from long-dead technologies — such as line-testing gizmos that date from the rotary phone era — but he’s got an answer for critics who suggest communications regulation is a thing of the past: Space is the next frontier.

Genachowski has spent the better part of his four years as chairman battling telephone and cable companies and GOP lawmakers as they tried to roll back regulations, but as he brushes off talk of an imminent departure, he told POLITICO that the FCC has a new mission: helping set a framework for commercial communications in space.

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Last year, SpaceX began launching rockets under a temporary FCC license to use federal airwaves. “You need spectrum to control the rocket,” Genachowski explained, adding that rockets contain sensors that communicate to Earth and radar to determine location. Spectrum has other uses, too. “You need a self-destruct button,” he added.

Next to NASA, Genachowski has headed one of the most tech-heavy agencies under President Barack Obama, and although he won’t discuss his immediate plans, there’s talk he’s unlikely to remain for a second term. During Obama’s first term, Genachowski used his private-sector experience to tackle some of the most difficult telecom debates in decades — adopting a national strategy for broadband Internet rollout, reforming subsidies for the needy to include Internet and mobile phones and making TV stations post online how much politicians pay to advertise.

Genachowski also intervened in epic disputes among industry segments, seeking to keep networks open and encourage innovation but not always earning supporters along the way. Web companies, such as Google, were fearful that broadband services would discriminate, so Genachowski ushered in the net neutrality rules that require all Internet traffic to be treated equally. Wireless companies were clamoring for more airwaves, so Genachowski pushed a plan to incentivize TV stations into selling their airwaves and receiving part of the proceeds from public auctions.

All the while, the chairman has been grappling with a growing move by telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon to undo regulations that date to Alexander Graham Bell’s technology and question the very need for the FCC.

Verizon went to court to complain that the commission overstepped its authority with net neutrality. The company’s argument that it has “a right to decide what they transmit online and that those business decisions are tantamount to speech deserving First Amendment protection” is worrisome to the FCC as it could undermine the commission’s authority to make many decisions. That case is expected to go to trial in 2013.

AT&T is taking a different approach, announcing a $14 billion plan to transition to an all IP-based fiber network from its old copper wire-based facilities. The regulatory implications are clear: AT&T would create a regulation-free service and not be subject to rules that require the company to continue costly investments in its traditional copper networks.

“The robust and vibrant debate comes with the job,” Genachowski said. “There’s a lot at stake. People have strong opinions. Having been in this space before, it wasn’t a surprise. What I learn from watching this space is that the only option is to try to do the best thing for the country and to feel good about it.”

When Genachowski became the commission’s 30th chairman in 2009, he was swept in on the same wave of “hope and change” as Obama.

Genachowski, the son of Polish immigrants, cut his teeth in politics serving on the Iran-Contra Committee and later became a senior staffer at the FCC under Bill Clinton’s chairman, Reed Hundt. He also served as an executive of Barry Diller’s IAC Corp.

Liberals across the technology landscape were thrilled that they were getting one of their own in Genachowski — a leftist technocrat who could undo the damage caused by George W. Bush’s two terms.

They waited for Genachowski to make a bold move, and then they waited some more.

“I would look at it through a lens of missed opportunity,” said Joel Kelsey, legislative director at Free Press. “He turned the leadership of the agency into a place where the companies they are supposed to regulate have become the constituents to appease, and the consumers they are supposed to protect are thought of very little. The standard that people should hold him to is what would be possible for an FCC chairman coming into office when the president has won a landslide and there is a 60-vote majority in the Senate and an overwhelming majority in the House, and that litmus test is pretty high.”